Anyone Alive
by lovablegeek
Summary: [PreRENT] The story of Benny and Mark, from college to the loft, all the way through to the events of Rent. BennyMark, BennyAlison. [One shot]


**audible**  
Benny always goes to bed relatively early, and Mark, night owl that he is, stays up late, studying. So by the time Mark goes to sleep, he always figures Benny's fast asleep – Benny's a deep sleeper, far as he can tell.  
He's wrong. Benny always wakes up when Mark gets up to turn out the light, pads quietly as he can – but not quietly enough – back to bed, and curls up in bed. And, a few minutes after Mark goes to bed, Benny always hears the slight shifting of blankets, the soft, stifled whimpers in the back of his throat, and the sharp intake of breath as Mark comes. Benny always lies there and pretends to be asleep, pretends he doesn't want to get up and join Mark in his bed, but for some reason it never occurs to Benny that Mark might intend for Benny to overhear him.

**about time**  
It's been going on for a few months, when Mark finally gets tired of waiting for Benny to do something, and takes the initiative himself. He turns out the light, while Benny's lying there on his side, back toward Mark. It startles him a little, when instead of hearing the creak of Mark's mattress as he lies down, there's a light touch on his back, and Mark's sliding into his bed. Benny jumps a little, rolls over to face Mark, but before he can ask just what's going on, Mark's lips are on his and Mark's hands on his bare chest, Mark's straddling Benny's stomach and Benny's wondering how Mark knows this is exactly what he's been wanting.

**anything taboo**  
As much as he wants it, wants Mark, something keeps telling Benny to slow down – that yellow light keeps flashing in his head. They shouldn't be doing this, what if their classmates found out, what if their parents found out, and wouldn't it be awkward, if this ended and they were stuck sharing the same room after that?  
But it's hard to say no when Mark's kissing him, hard to say no to his lips and his hands, his whispers in Benny's ear. So he just doesn't say no, and after a while that flashing yellow light in his mind goes away. After a while, he doesn't think to argue when Mark suggests that they move their beds together, or when he suggests that they live together again the next year, and the next.

**alphabet city**  
"This isn't weird, right?"  
Mark's hanging out the window, looking at the street below, but now he looks back at Benny with a frown. "What's not?"  
"Living together. Now." Benny glances around the the big, empty loft they just moved into. "I mean, it's one thing in college, but..."  
Mark jumps out of the windowsill and walks back across the bare floor to Benny. "No. It's not." His hands settle on Benny's waist. "I like you, and I want to live with you." He pulls Benny toward him, kisses him, and Benny has no objections.  
When Mark breaks the kiss, he adds, "We're gonna have to get roommates, though."  
"Why?"  
"You want to pay for this place on our own?"  
"Well. No."  
"That's okay." Another kiss. "I've got friends."

**anarchy**  
Benny had hoped that he'd be able to mostly avoid Mark's friends, or that they'd at least be quiet and he'd be able to get along with them easily, without any effort on his part. That's not exactly the case. Collins isn't so bad, really – in and out of the loft, but reliable enough that Benny's willing to put up with the phone calls from Greece at some ridiculous hour of the morning to tell them he'd been arrested for streaking. And then there's Roger, and with him in the loft there are always the sounds of guitar playing at two in the morning, or, if not, then the sound of him coming home with some girl at four in the morning, and with Roger in the loft you always have to worry when you smell smoke.  
Mark catches him one day, and pulls him lightly to the other side of the loft, kisses him and then murmurs softly, "You just have to get used to them, you know?" He pauses, and grins. "Like someone else's kids."

**accident prone**  
You'd think Roger's more accident prone. Thing is, he's used to taking stupid risks, so he knows how to not get hurt. But when Mark tries something...  
"You're bleeding," Benny says, and Mark looks at his forearm, scraped raw along one side.  
"Oh. Yeah." He doesn't seem surprised.  
"How'd you do that?""I fell off a table."  
"Why were you on a table?" Benny raises an eyebrow at him.  
"I was trying to fix the... It was raining and there was water dripping from the skylight, so I..." He trails off, seeing Benny's growing smile, and sighs, "Oh, shut up."

**apple-scented**  
It's little things, Benny discovers, that he likes the most about Mark. His hands – not delicate or graceful, but fascinating nevertheless, and he talks with them all the time. How he bites his nails when he's thinking, sometimes to the quick, and then acts surprised if it hurts. How he sleeps on his stomach, head resting on his arms, so his shoulder blades stick out clearly on his back. Or the nape of his neck, right where skin meets soft, short hair, and when Benny presses his lips there he can always smell a trace of Mark's apple-scented shampoo.

**aposiopesis**  
There are advantages to being with someone who knows you inside out, the way Mark does Benny. Maybe it's that they were so close in college, maybe it's just Mark's observant like that.  
Whatever it is, Mark knows all the things that would take any other lover years to figure out. Things like when to argue with Benny and when to let him make his own damn mistakes, or how he never means any threat he makes. And when he starts to say something sweet and stops himself after one word because it just sounds awkward, Mark understands that too.

**apprehension**  
"Do I have to explain it to you again?"  
"Apparently. ...Don't look at me like that. I'm not stupid, I just don't get this whole 'cyberstudio' thing."  
"You say cyberstudio like it's a disease. It's not going to hurt you, Mark."  
"I didn't think it was. And I'm not saying it like it's a disease, I'm saying it like it's some strange thing I don't get. And that's because it is."  
"I told you three times already."  
"And it didn't make sense then either. If you just – mmph. Okay, the kissing's nice. But I still don't get it."  
"You're hopeless."

**actual reality**  
Just like none of the others seem to understand Benny's idea for a cyberstudio, Benny doesn't quite get the concept of "actual reality", no matter how many times Collins tries to explain it to him, and it's frustrating, because it feels like he ought to get it.  
Except there are those times where he thinks that maybe he does, brief flashes of understanding like a bolt out of the sky.  
Mark kissing his neck, and feeling the curve of his smile against his skin.  
A quick glance from Mark, quiet and studying and intense, bright blue eyes Benny could get lost in, and has before.  
Sitting up with Mark, listening to patter of rain on the street outside, smelling wet asphalt because the window's open a crack and they never can get it to close completely, and the warmth of Mark pressed against his side.  
Times like that, maybe, he does understand.

**alison**  
There's no real reason he's in the Life that day, except that there's no real food in the loft, and it's right down the street, so maybe he doesn't need a reason, and he doesn't spend any time thinking over it.  
But there's no reason he can think of for her to be here – she doesn't belong here, in the East Village, in Alphabet City, in this place that's become his life. But she catches his attention, and holds it, so after a minute he stands up, walks over to her table, and says hello.  
There's no reason to do that, and every reason not to.

**abandoning**  
Saying hello somehow turns into sitting at her table, turns into talking to her for the rest of the afternoon, turns into getting her number and asking her out to dinner a week later.  
Dinner turns into going home with her – to her home, a world away from the East Village. Coming home, that night, he tells Mark he had visiting friends in town, he'd been with them and hadn't thought to call him, and that it wouldn't happen again. It surprises him how easily the lie comes to him, and he's not sure why.  
To tell the truth, he's not sure about any of this. Why he lied, why he'd gone out, why he'd spoken to Alison at all, except that with Mark, things are always spontaneous, exciting, bohemian, and they spin his head around, confuse him entirely. With Alison... things are everything he would expect them to be, and not confusing at all, and maybe he wants that sort of clarity in his life.

**aberration**  
Mark never used to be this rough with him – forward, yes, and there were always the playful bites and scratches that Benny doesn't mind, but this is different. This is Mark pressing into him just a little too hard, Mark's mouth on his shoulder and biting down like he means to draw blood – he doesn't, but that's almost a surprise. This is Mark's lips wrapped around his cock, his hands on Benny's hips and his fingers digging in too tightly, jerking him toward him too roughly, his eyes fixed downwards so he doesn't meet Benny's eyes.  
And with all of that, and with the difference from how sex with Mark used to be, Benny can't help but wonder if Mark knows.

**acceptance**  
It takes a couple hours for what Mark had said to sink in, and in that time Benny doesn't leave his room, just sits on his bed – their bed – and stares out the window, watching cars go by on the street outside, watching the sidewalks, children and couples and people walking their dogs. He keeps thinking that if he keeps sitting there, something will have changed when he comes out. If he waits long enough, Mark will take it back.  
But after those hours have passed, he gets up and steps outside to find Mark still sitting on the couch. Mark looks up at him when the bedroom door opens, and Benny grimaces despite himself. "You want me to leave, I will." He pauses, and sighs, "Even if I do own the building. Just get me a damn suitcase."  
Mark looks away from him and simply points to the closet.

**appellation**  
"Close up," Mark narrates to his camera – and Benny can't quite figure out why, because the damn thing can't pick up sound anyway – "Benjamin Coffin the Third, our ex-roommate..."  
He goes on to say more, but Benny isn't paying much attention, because for some reason it stings him, what Mark had called him. Not ex-roommate, because that's true, and he would be that even if they were on good terms. But "Benjamin Coffin the Third"... That's someone else, that isn't him – or maybe it is him, now, but it wasn't the person who'd been Mark's college roommate, or the friend who'd moved into the loft with him, or the lover who'd never said he loved him but the knowledge was always there all the same, and that he isn't any of those things any longer drives him absolutely mad.

**anticlimax**  
There's a split second, between the time Mimi runs off and the door of the church bursts open, that Benny has the chance to say something. Mark glances over at him, looking hurt and lost, and Benny feels almost as scared and uncertain as Mark looks. He could try to apologize again, maybe. Or just forgo apologies altogether, take the two or three steps between them, and kiss him. He still remembers the feeling of Mark's lips against his, over a year ago now, and he wants that now, badly enough that he starts to step forward without even thinking, his hand stretched out toward Mark–  
And then the door of the church bursts open, Collins is thrust out, and Benny backs up one, two steps, pulls his hand back, and the opportunity is lost, the moment is gone. And he knows it's probably the last he'll get.


End file.
